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Full Idea
We have three different ways in which we arrive at concepts or universals: there is a clarification, where we have a ready-made concept and define it; we have a combination (where a definition creates a concept); and an experience can lead to a habit.
Gist of Idea
We reach concepts by clarification, or by definition, or by habitual experience
Source
H.H. Price (Review of Aron 'Our Knowledge of Universals' [1946], p.190)
Book Ref
-: 'Philosophy' [-], p.190
A Reaction
[very compressed] He cites Russell as calling the third one a 'condensed induction'. There seems to an intellectualist and non-intellectualist strand in the abstractionist tradition.
| 10644 | A 'felt familiarity' with universals is more primitive than abstraction [Price,HH] |
| 10645 | We reach concepts by clarification, or by definition, or by habitual experience [Price,HH] |
| 10646 | Our understanding of 'dog' or 'house' arises from a repeated experience of concomitances [Price,HH] |
| 9031 | The basic concepts of conceptual cognition are acquired by direct abstraction from instances [Price,HH] |
| 9033 | Recognition must precede the acquisition of basic concepts, so it is the fundamental intellectual process [Price,HH] |
| 9032 | Before we can abstract from an instance of violet, we must first recognise it [Price,HH] |
| 9035 | If judgement of a characteristic is possible, that part of abstraction must be complete [Price,HH] |
| 9034 | There may be degrees of abstraction which allow recognition by signs, without full concepts [Price,HH] |
| 9036 | There is pre-verbal sign-based abstraction, as when ice actually looks cold [Price,HH] |
| 9037 | Intelligent behaviour, even in animals, has something abstract about it [Price,HH] |
| 9030 | Abstractions can be interpreted dispositionally, as the ability to recognise or imagine an item [Price,HH] |
| 9029 | If ideas have to be images, then abstract ideas become a paradoxical problem [Price,HH] |
| 14329 | Some dispositional properties (such as mental ones) may have no categorical base [Price,HH] |